Date Set for Palestinian Issue

October 17, 1974

UNITED NATIONS (Oct. 16)

The consequences of the General Assembly vote Monday recognizing the Palestine Liberation Organization and inviting it to participate in the Assembly’s debate on the Palestine Question was still being felt in the UN corridors and outside the headquarters of the world organization.

The Arab delegations and their allies could barely conceal their jubilation over the vote of 106-4 in favor of the resolution. Many of the Arabs were especially gratified with the support they received from a number of European countries, especially members of the European Economic Community who are currently engaged in a European-Arab dialogue on trade.

At the same time the Arabs and the Afro-Asian and Communist bloc countries were preparing to spread the diplomatic welcome mat for the arrival next month of PLO chieftain Yasir Arafat to address the Assembly. The Assembly’s debate on the Palestine Question is due early next month. probably right after the Nov. 5 elections.

The views that will be expressed by Arafat will in all likelihood be set at the Arab summit conference in Rabat, Morocco due to begin Oct. 26. Two PLO representatives are already in New York. Sadat Hasan has been here for some time on a visitor’s visa, and Nabeel Shaath who arrived recently on a visa requested by Tunisia. Arafat is expected to be accompanied by several heads of states of African and non-aligned nations.

Meanwhile, Egyptian Ambassador Esmat Abdel Meguid told the General Assembly last night that the UN should cancel its aid to Israel and demanded that Israel refund assistance it has already received from the UN. He said that the Jewish State could not be termed a developing country and added that the aid the UN development program had supplied to Israel be given to developing nations.

REVERBERATIONS CONTINUE IN JEWISH COMMUNITY

Reverberations in the Jewish community continued, meanwhile, in the wake of the Assembly vote. Israeli Knesseter Haim Landau, who is a member of the Israeli delegation to the Assembly, condemned those “civilized states” who voted for “the legitimization of the Arab Nazi organization,” the PLO.

The European countries that voted for the resolution should know that they “encourage genocide” and “return the world to Hitler’s era,” Landau said. According to Landau, those states who support the PLO because of “oil blackmail” will soon realize that the Arabs will blackmail them further. He told the JTA that Israel is not going to participate in the upcoming debate on the Palestinian Question but she will raise her voice on the issue.

Elmer L. Winter, president of the American Jewish Committee, charged that the invitation to the PLO was “not only unwise and a setback for peace, but sets a dangerous precedent that threatens to undermine the United Nations Charter and the fabric of international society.”

He questioned the legality of the Assembly action, stating that the Assembly “has only the power to make recommendations, and even then is enjoined by the Charter not to act on matters being considered by the Security Council.” The Council, he noted, has adopted-Resolutions 242 and 338 and these resolutions form the framework within which current UN and U.S. Mideast peace efforts are being undertaken.

TERRORISTS GIVEN RESPECTABILITY

Mrs. Faye Schenk, chairman of the executive committee of the American Zionist Federation, said the Assembly action was a capitulation to Arab blackmail and threats. “Knowing that the PLO is nothing more than a band of killers bent on destruction of innocent men, women and children, the UN has by its vote given respectability to terrorists, sanctuary to murderers and a forum to propagandize for the destruction of the State of Israel as a Jewish State, which was the only reason for the UN action in 1947 in voting for a Jewish State in a partitioned Palestine.”

A demonstration by young people, composed largely of Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Jews, to protest against the Assembly vote, took place today at the Isaiah Wall opposite the UN in spite of a torrential downpour. A spokesman for the coordinating group, the Youth Institute for Peace in the Middle East, said the PLO “is a blood-stained terrorist gang which should be in prison behind bars rather than in the chamber of the General Assembly behind a rostrum.” The young people carried signs stating: “PLO must go”: “Say no to terror”; and “Say no to the PLO.”